A US woman who pleaded guilty to helping kill her own mother and stuffing the body in a suitcase during a luxury holiday in Bali has been sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Judge Matthew Kennelly gave Heather Mack credit for the approximately two years she spent in custody in Chicago awaiting trial since her return in 2021. Her lawyer Michael Leonard said her formal sentence will be around 23 years in total.
Federal prisoners also get credit for good behaviour, roughly 50 days for each year.
Prosecutors had recommended a 28-year sentence for Mack for conspiring with her boyfriend to kill Sheila von Wiese-Mack in 2014.
Before her sentence was read, Mack apologised to her mother’s brother and sister through tears.
“It breaks my heart hearing you cry,” she told Debbi Curran, her aunt and Ms von Wiese-Mack’s sister, who had audibly sobbed as her daughter read a victim impact statement on Ms Curran’s behalf.
“There’s no excuse for trying to harm her,” Mack added. “I miss and love my mother.”
The government also wanted the 28-year-old to get five years of supervised release, a 250,000 dollar fine and restitution of 262,708 dollars.
In a filing last week, prosecutors said the recommended sentence “is warranted and sufficient, but not greater than necessary to serve a just and appropriate punishment for Mack’s heinous crime”.
The sentencing hearing began on Wednesday morning with evidence from Bill Wiese, Ms von Wiese-Mack’s brother and Mack’s uncle. He asked Judge Matthew Kennelly to impose the maximum sentence possible, saying Mack had never shown remorse.
“If it were up to me, Heather would spend the rest of her life behind bars,” he said.
Mack, who wore an orange jumpsuit, orange slip-on shoes and glasses, remained mostly impassive as her uncle spoke, occasionally looking at attendees and giving small smiles to some.
Mack pleaded guilty last June to one count of conspiring to kill Ms von Wiese-Mack with her then-boyfriend to gain access to a 1.5 million dollar trust fund.
Prosecutors have said Mack, then 18 and pregnant, covered her mother’s mouth while Tommy Schaefer bludgeoned Ms von Wiese-Mack with a fruit bowl in a hotel room.
Prosecutors said Mack and Schaefer had planned the killing for months, and that video evidence showed them trying to get the small suitcase containing the body into a taxi.
Mack, who lived with her mother in Oak Park, Chicago, served seven years of her 10-year Indonesian sentence for her 2015 conviction of being an accessory to Ms von Wiese-Mack’s murder.
She was deported in 2021 and US agents arrested her on arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
Mack’s then-six-year-old daughter was with her when she was arrested. The girl was placed with a relative after a custody fight.
Mack’s lawyers had sought a 15-year prison term, but with credit for her seven years in the Indonesian prison. She was automatically credited for the more than two years she spent in custody in Chicago.
“For the taxpayers to incur the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars to incarcerate Ms Mack for an extended period of time… is particularly unnecessary,” lawyer Michael Leonard said in a recent court filing.
The plea agreement called for a sentence of no more than 28 years and for two other charges against Mack to be dropped.
Schaefer was convicted of murder and is serving an 18-year sentence in Indonesia. He is charged in the same US indictment.
His mother, Kia Walker, was in the courtroom on Wednesday for Mack’s sentencing.
